Axiom Verge: PlayStation's Very Own Metroid

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Embrace your past (and glitches, too).

By Colin Moriarty

I'm not granted a whole lot of free time at E3 every year, so I really covet those few moments when I can roam the show floor without having to run to a meeting or a behind-closed-doors demo in the next ten minutes. During my last day at the show this past June, I stumbled upon a game at Sony's expansive booth that I had previously only heard about in passing. It's called Axiom Verge, and I was left thoroughly impressed with it.

Axiom Verge is the brainchild of one man: Tom Happ. Happ is an industry veteran who cut his teeth at Petroglyph and Electronic Arts before venturing out on his own to pursue the passion project that would one day turn into his upcoming PS4, Vita, and PC game. And make no mistake, Happ really is his own team. He didn't only come up with Axiom Verge; he designed it, made the art, concocted the soundtrack, coded it, and more. Everything in Axiom Verge has Happ's fingerprints on it because he's the only person working on it.

"I've been a professional developer for ten years, now," Happ told me. "I've been a programmer, animator, and technical artist on a lot of titles between EA and Petroglyph, so I knew a lot of specifics about game development going in. I didn't get any help on anything in the game. I think most programmers tinker around with stuff in their spare time, and for the first four years, Axiom Verge was like that, only in this case I didn't lose interest and go do something else."

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Axiom Verge is the brainchild of one man: Tom Happ.

Axiom Verge, as you can see from the video preview above or the screenshots littered around this article (with many more here), is heavily inspired by Metroid. In fact, that's what drew me to it on the busy E3 show floor. In terms of aesthetics, it unabashedly borrows from Nintendo's classic '80s non-linear action game, but there's a reason for that, and it's not just because Metroid happens to be one of Tom Happ's favorites.

"For level design, I feel Super Metroid is one of the best and most rewarding [games], particularly if you like to explore," Happ said. "I prefer the visual aesthetic of NES Metroid, though, because I feel that the discrete 16x16 blocks of terrain really help to telegraph that they are all physically interactive entities and not just setpieces."

Battling a creepy boss.

"In the first half of the NES lifecycle, a lot of games were made like this," he continued. "Super Mario Bros., Wrecking Crew, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Zelda. But the desire for greater realism caused most devs to do whatever possible to hide the tile-based nature of their games. So by the time we got to more modern titles like Shadow Complex, you need a special glow or effect to denote what can be interacted with and what is just a non-interactive boundary."

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My original thought was for Axiom Verge to combine the best elements of side-scrolling classics; the controls of Contra, the locomotion of Bionic Commando, the weapon variety of various shmups, Happ noted.

Happ was kind enough to provide me with an early pre-alpha PlayStation 4 build of Axiom Verge that represents about 30 percent of the game. He even provided me with three pre-determined saves that show me various parts of the game. When you start playing, you realize that even though Metroid is the aesthetic inspiration for Axiom Verge, it doesn't necessarily feel like Metroid.

"My original thought was for Axiom Verge to combine the best elements of side-scrolling classics; the controls of Contra, the locomotion of Bionic Commando, the weapon variety of various shmups," he noted. The former is especially noticeable. While Metroid relied on a few upgrades and new weapons, Axiom Verge introduces them rapidly. A couple of hours into the game, you could have six or seven weapons, including your standard Axiom Disruptor, the spreadshot Multi-Disruptor, the lightning-shooting Kilver, the aptly-named Firewall, and more. And this doesn't include your separate toolset, which happens to be at the core of the experience.

Axiom Verge takes place in the year 2005 and revolves around a scientist named Trace. At the beginning of the game, a Ninja Gaiden-style cutscene introduces us to Trace, and ultimately to his untimely death in a tragic laboratory explosion. Trace, when he regains consciousness, finds himself in a sprawling complex full of dangerous enemies, and only a single, unknown person speaks to him telepathically. Otherwise, he's all alone, unsure if he's dead or alive. "The story is all about his exploration of the world," Happ explained. "It unravels more like a mystery novel than an action movie."

Time to explore.

The central mystery has to do with NES-style glitches that are strewn around the game, and how that aforementioned toolset helps you take advantage of those glitches. When you see some background art bugging out, or a wall that's flashing in and out of existence, you'd think it was the game acting up (I sure did from time to time, as the build I have is pre-alpha). But in fact, these glitches are placed there intentionally, and it's up to you to figure out how to exploit them using a firearm-like device known as the Address Disruptor.

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Ultimately, Sony signed Happ and his game to its famous Pub Fund initiative, securing console exclusivity for the time being.

"I had actually been creating the art and music for the game for over a year before I started coding, and the glitch idea didn't come to me until I was almost at the end of that phase," Happ said. "It comes from the notion of the artificial boundaries placed on games, and how glitches can give you this exhilarating feeling of being able to see and do things you weren't 'meant' to. So, it's part glitch, part Game Genie, part secret passwords."

As Happ toiled away on Axiom Verge, he eventually got setup with a meeting with Sony through his associates at IndieCade (he also later talked to first party representatives from Nintendo and Microsoft). Ultimately, Sony signed Happ and his game to its famous Pub Fund initiative, securing console exclusivity for the time being.

Axiom Verge -- which Happ says will take completionists around eight hours to complete their first time through -- may or may not come packing a Platinum Trophy (it's ultimately up to Sony). But it will come to both PlayStation 4 and Vita in early 2015, and to PC later that year. And we'll have much, much more on Axiom Verge in the coming months right here on IGN.